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We'll start off with the good stuff. Paris' punishment is an interesting one. It possibly violates the Geneva Convention, but it's an interesting type of punishment nonetheless. There's some good character development again and interaction between The Doctor and Kes. It's also fun seeing Tuvok play detective, a reminiscent feeling of watching Data Sherlock Holmes-ing in TNG. Even Neelix, comes off as useful in this episode providing good background information.

However, despite this, the episode is BORING as hell. Even without knowing the resolution, this was never going to stack up to be an interesting episode. It's good seeing a main character acting in a less than professional manner, but that's about it. It's a run-of-the mill whodunit with no surprises along the way.

Even the dog lynchpin in Tuvok's evidence presentation was kind of obvious coming - oh and by the way, that ending was lame as hell.

This episode isn't good. There are so many things about this episode that bother me and in addition, it's just boring.

First of all, Chakotay being portrayed as the self-proclaimed expert on religious practices is a little annoying, though I figure he's the most logical choice, given the cast of characters we have.

Once again, Harry Kim gets screwed over and is randomly whisked away and deposited in a coffin. I find this somewhat amusing.

One thing I will say is a nice change of pace is the attitude towards religion (although this was something that DS9 had already established on it's own before VOY). Religion is not dismissed as an antiquated concept - merely a different way of thinking. This is in contrast to TNG's 'religion = nonsense' attitude (although I personally prefer TNG's take as it's more closely aligned with my own attitudes).

Also the special effects with Voyager flying around the planet are VERY pretty, arguably some of the best seen so far on the show.

However, this episode is mostly boring, with in fact, a little discomfort. Voyager's peril in the episode plays out like it's getting corpses fired at it and Kim's escape plan involves a subversion of these people's funeral rites. It's all a bit silly, and in some ways distasteful.

Harry Kim being abducted and deposited in an alien coffin nets him his second time in peril so far.

This episode is fantastic, but can I start off by noting that things kick off with us finding out Harry fell out of a holographic boat whilst on a date? I'm sorry, but that just kills me.

Anyway, this an excellent outing for Voyager and is one of the first times the Prime Directive is really turned on it's head. It's a landmark story for Voyager, and for Star Trek in general.

The pacing is excellent, there's no wasted screen time here. Characters and setting are established, the complication is introduced very quickly which gives us plenty of time to wrangle the issue (but not so much so that characters are left saying what we already know).

There's plenty of inter-character conflict as we see the various ideals of each character debated and fleshed out and there's some decent character insight for Janeway and growth for B'Elanna.

I will say, I don't agree with Janeway's decision here, but this doesn't mean I dislike her, nor is her perspective without merit. It's a tough call, but if it were me, my principles would have to take a back seat to my responsibility as Captain to safeguard my ship and crew. It's a tight situation where I don't condemn a person for going the other way on this one and an unwillingness to betray your own principles is admirable in the least.

If i had one slight criticism, it would be the antagonist, Gathorel. Almost immediately his mandate is obvious. They could have replaced every line of his dialogue with "I AM A SLEAZEBAG". But it's not really an issue as his characterisation is not relevant to the story or issue at hand.

This is easily Voyager's strongest outing so far and good science fiction overall.

It's difficult to comment on this episode as it plays out in a fairly standard fashion, and you basically just have to watch and have the information spoon-fed to you as you go.

At the end of the day, this is a fairly formulaic whodunit story with some good character development for Chakotay.

Unfortunately, with whodunit stories, whilst it's perfectly normal to conceal a certain amount of information to the audience, the audience can be left too far behind otherwise it does become an entirely passive experience where you're left waiting for the next clue to be revealed by a character's exposition.

'State of Flux' suffers a bit from this where there's a misbalance between the clues given, and the amount of exposition. There's too much withheld which results in a huge amount of expository explanation at the end where you can't help but feel the writers are snickering to themselves "look how clever our plot is! *nyuck nyuck*"

It just makes the episode a little on the boring side, and for a big event episode, this shouldn't be the case.

This episode starts off with, HARRY KIM IN PERIL! This is becoming a little too frequent to be a coincidence I feel.

And we have another holdeck drama. Whilst this is a first for Voyager, it's not a first for Star Trek and by now, this dilemma is getting REALLY old and the novelty is entirely worn off.

One of the biggest issues with holodeck peril is the audience can't help but ask "WHY DON'T THEY JUST TURN IT OFF??". Of course, there's a lengthy technobabble explanation as to how Kim, Paris and Tuvok's molecular structure is caught up in this holo energy malarky. The explanation is pretty much akin to "WEEEOOOOO MAGIC!"

Making this a Doctor episode almost saves it and although the Danish vikings are corny as hell, I find them amusing and it feels as though the Doc is stuck in a mid-90's roleplaying computer game. But at the end of the day, it's all really lame.

The Doctor caring about Freya dying is just bizarre by the way. I can perfectly understand the Doctor losing a holodeck personality akin to a human losing someone who is flesh and blood. But the Doctor is DIFFERENT to the holodeck characters. He is a sentient being who has become more than the sum of his parts. Freya is a fictional character whom can be recreated at a whim.

Harry Kim Horror Count stands at 3 for being absorbed by holodeck Beowulf energy, and I'll also note Garrett Wang's almost total absence from this entire episode (he gets one line at the end).

I get the impression this episode cops a lot of a flack for being terrible, but I don't mind it. It's hardly great though.

The episode opens with Janeway playing in some Victorian period holodeck piece and I have to say, this is slightly alienating to me. I don't like literature of this setting, and it's also in stark contrast to the various past times of the previous captains, most of which I could get on board with.

I noticed in Cathexis, although it's been a problem for most of the season, that the editing has been terrible. Non-dramatic beats are used as act-breaks and other dramatic moments are just ploughed straight through. However, some background reading reveals that VOY was being restructured around a five act layout (from the old four act format) and this was causing difficulties for the entire production crew, so that explains that.

It causes logic errors to crop up often though, like Kes magically knowing about the alien prescence on the ship which had just been discussed for the first time in sickbay about 15 seconds earlier - a discussion she wasn't present for at all.

Neelix is particularly intolerable this episode as he rages about everything he doesn't understand (which in this episode, is everything).

This episode is really quite strange, but I kind of like it. The crew being forcibly turned against eachother is pretty cool and creates some solid dramatic tension. Tuvok being the real bad guy all along as fairly obvious the whole time unfortunately though.

I get the impression this episode cops a lot of a flack for being terrible, but I don't mind it. It's hardly great though.

The episode opens with Janeway playing in some Victorian period holodeck piece and I have to say, this is slightly alienating to me. I don't like literature of this setting, and it's also in stark contrast to the various past times of the previous captains, most of which I could get on board with.

I wouldn't like Victorian literature either if all of it were actually that corny and awful as VOY makes it look. It's like a cheap third rate knockoff of Victorian literature... or a deliberate parody. Janeway's taste in holoprograms is very bad.

^^ I like "Jane Austin" type films and I didn't think this was horribly done... Victorian lit has a little corn to it, I mean It was a holonovel and a "deliberate parody".
I felt is was a stereotypical way a middle aged woman would spend her free time and it made me smile the first time i saw it. Ok, fine...I giggled.
I get what you mean about alienating because I could never get into Sisko's baseball obsession...
However they dont do much more with this holoprogram... Maybe you'll like Da Vinci.

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